re: Let's suppose Trump is right. All countries come to the table...

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It's not just that. The bait and switch on what they were doing (reciprocal tariffs turning into tariffs based on trade deficits) has made it impossible for many countries to fix things. Poor countries cannot afford to buy our expensive exports to make the trade balance neutral. It's chaos for the countries involved, too.

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So the solution is to let them continue to take advantage of us.....like Europe, then Japan, and now China????

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Just Tariff all imports at 10% and target abusers like China.

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This would make a lot more sense

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So the solution is to let them continue to take advantage of us

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This is more talking point than reality.

We have benefited the most out of this system.

Thanks Hodag. It was very interesting.

I love how this board thinks this was just dreamed up. Some of the smartest business minds in the world have dedicated their time to this process of the best way forward.

I loved Bessent analogy. He said our GDP is growing simply because we are printing money and growing the govt PERIOD. Its akin to a bodybuilder taking steroid shots and boasting about how he looks, while internally his organs are dying with every shot. It simply cant continue.

Will this work, its our best shot out of this mess, and option 2 aint so good.

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We negotiate full scale equal trade. 0% across the board. Big win, I suppose. How exactly is that pushing manufacturing back stateside? Labor is still cheaper in Vietnam. Isn't the only way to make money be to have a baseline tariff on every import? Seems counterintuitive to target 0% tariff. This isn't criticism, I just want to think this through a bit. And no, I don't claim to know everything and there isn't an agenda with this question.

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Are any of these outcomes goals of this tariff plan? The objectives seem to be so all over the place that it’s hard to figure out best possible outcomes.

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The world's dominant economy and best manufacturing nation? The horror.

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What? Who on earth thinks the US is the best manufacturing nation? Doors flying off planes, stranded astronauts, trains derailing, roads collapsing. We cant even get auto workers to buy their own products.

"national security". China systematically subsidized specific industries and destroyed the manufacturing base of those industries in the US. And no its not a national security argument, you are just being obtuse as usual.

Be better, not this childish dribble.

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The median income in Brazil is 7K a year

You think someone there thinks they're getting over on us?

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You have never spoken to a soybean farmer or a person who raises cattle in the US have you

In 1960 the US had 40% of the world's GDP, we now have 24%, you call that winning???????

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Are any of these outcomes goals of this tariff plan?

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Nope. Changes hourly.


These rubes fail to realize as well that many early tariffs in the USA were for finished products, and not components.

That way US businesses could buy cheap imports, add value and sell here for a profit.

Why are you assuming that all countries will agree to a 0% tariff?

If there are zero tariffs on our exports, wouldn't that make it cheaper to mfg in the US as we would have new markets to sell to? Wouldn't economies of scale lower production costs?

With new markets, it will now be profitable to produce in America with higher labor costs as profit margins increase without the tariffs levied by foreign countries.

AI and automation will improve this as well. Not making moves to secure these factories now will leave us behind the curve. Existing factories will be converted more cheaply than new ones will be built, so the not-well-thought-out argument that we can just build automated factories here when the time comes is extremely short-sighted.

The anti-tariff bros will tell us that Canada's tariffs on the US were no big deal because we never hit the quota that triggers them. Their inability to see the big picture prevents them from understanding that it's not financially viable for a US company to move into a region that will have limited sales. They don't understand that it takes money to expand market share, and that the upfront costs to grow the company in Canada is not worth the limited profit to be made due to the loss of sales above the quota.

They prance around telling everyone how they know best when they repeatedly demonstrate that they can't see any more than what is in front of them.